SPEAKER_00 0:01

Welcome to the Ask for the Skinny Podcast with a guest. I'm proud to present Jake the Lapig. Jake, welcome to the show. Please tell us more about yourself.

SPEAKER_01 0:12

What is your story? Absolutely. Well, thank you so much for having me. Um, my story is uh the same as many people's stories. Uh, I started a career, I was in the uh US Air Force, and I did that for a couple years. Wasn't really my scene, got out. Uh, but I was in IT and uh ended up building cell towers for ATT for a couple years. Um, that project or company that I was on ended up getting shut down, and so I needed a new gig. And uh accidentally, again, there's gonna be a lot of those accidentally in this backstory here. Uh got a job in marketing at a marketing agency. I knew nothing about marketing at the time, and uh absolutely fell in love with the concept of marketing and the actions and and ideas and development of marketing. And so I just took time to study everything about that, ended up uh becoming the creative director at the agency that I worked at, having no previous experience, and uh went on to uh build and sell two agencies and actually uh just exited a third agency. And um now I'm I'm on my own, and I'll be honest, it's the happiest I've ever been in in the last 10 years that I can remember.

SPEAKER_00 1:49

Amazing story, and uh I like it how you go from um basically a government job uh with a lot of structure to and then you transition to a lot more creative job with uh a lot more creative potential, but uh I imagine a lot less structure. So can you tell us a bit more about your transition? Um of course you make it uh sound uh so easy, and it's uh and and because you're so successful, everything uh that uh ends well, uh was well, but um our listeners that are just experiencing these transitions and uh are experiencing burnout and midlife crisis. Um how should how should they go about changing career? Because you went from IT into marketing, it's a completely different field. Can you can you give us uh an insight how that happened? Uh you you you you said you make it sound so easy, but uh I I imagine it was not that easy at the time. Can you can you uh share a bit more?

SPEAKER_01 3:03

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. So when I made the transition from kind of IT and technical into marketing, I actually got a job in marketing that was very suited for me. I was a project manager, I was it was very simple transition. I didn't need to know the marketing piece. But when I got into the company, um, and this is a blessing and a curse for me. I love learning new topics, new things. I love I have my hobby is hobbies, uh-huh, right? And so when I discovered this marketing world, I said, there's this is so interesting, there's so much to it. Let me go dig into it. And so um I voraciously went out on my own and started learning uh, you know, branding and psychology and advertising, and um and I would I would say of all of the transitions in my life, that one felt the most organic because it followed the rule that I now follow, which is uh do what you feel passionately to do. And that that's ultimately what I've come full circle with being an entrepreneur, being a person who's exited multiple businesses or has gone out on my own, is that if you're not passionately doing what you're passionate about, you will eventually hit a burnout wall, which is one of the reasons why I left my last agency. Um, we I sold my agency. I ended up going with it to the new agency that had acquired it, and they had sold me this dream of doing the things that I wanted to be doing. And over time, those things never manifested, and I became more anxious, more frustrated, more tired, more angry, more bitter about everything that I was doing every single day. And uh it wasn't until I sat down a few months ago and just sat. I I I committed to an hour of sitting with my eyes closed, doing nothing, and and just asking myself one question, which is what do you want to do? And listening to that small inner voice that had been choked out by the fear of not having money, not having respect, not being the expectation of everybody else. And it was like you you need to go and play, you need to go and and do your own thing for a while. And so um since I made that decision to to step away and do my own thing, which has been, you know, taking back my my marketing consulting and uh helping small businesses and and entrepreneurs grow their businesses, but then also playing with this playground of of AI and and my hobbies and um you know spending time with family or or going to visit friends, letting myself do what I want to do has completely revitalized me, and now I'm doing more than I have in the last several years.

SPEAKER_00 6:38

Okay. Um I I will ask you something that I ask most of my guests.

SPEAKER_01 6:44

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 6:44

You are a book author.

SPEAKER_01 6:46

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 6:47

When you're thinking about how to get out of burnout, how to avoid or get out of midlife crisis, or basically solving any life situation, you have many possibilities. We have so much content available online that is located, it's free. We have so many books that are available, and yet some problems cannot be solved with a book. You need a coach, a mentor. You said that uh you're also a consultant. Um when would you say it, or how would you define when can a book help you out, and when do you need a coach, consultant to help you help you look at your blind spots and help you move on?

SPEAKER_01 7:32

Oh man, that's a phenomenal question. When I think coaches are a very interesting thing because we think that we get coaches and mentors and consultants for one reason, which is they contain knowledge and understanding that we don't. But rather encouraging and holding my clients' feet to the fire about the things they already know they want to do. I am more so a mom, if you will, that is pushing my clients into what they already want to do. Accountability, if you will. And so if you have the willpower, if you have the the capability to read a book and then do what that book says, you probably don't need a coach or a mentor. But if you feel stuck and you're like, I just I don't know what it is, you you do because you know you're stuck and you're just struggling with the accountability of executing on what you already know. And so that's that's what I would say is if if you feel stuck, you that's that's the time. If you don't feel stuck, if you're like, I just need to know more, I just need to explore more, and you're willing to do that, you're great, you're on the right path. But that would be the difference for me.

SPEAKER_00 9:34

Amazing answer. Thank you. Um, I like how you explain things when you need it and when you don't need it, because I really like the the the way that you look at it, that it's possible not to need a coach. And uh as a coach, because you're also a coach or a mentor, and you said, Okay, there's a time that you don't need me. And I and I and I believe that is the highest form of honesty, and uh how to um explain and be useful when you're needed, and uh just don't bother or don't mix uh when um you don't add value.

SPEAKER_01 10:10

Um a true coach, a true mentor, their entire objective is to get fired by their client. I truly believe that if you are a successful mentor, a successful consultant, a successful coach, you should be getting fired constantly because you're actually taking them to a point where they can pick up the pace and run on their own.

SPEAKER_00 10:39

Yeah, that that is amazing. So much uh wisdom in in in that uh explanation. Um, Jake, how can I get some info about your book? Can you share a bit more about the backstory of your uh book and yeah, uh some insights from a book so that uh we spark interest in our uh uh listeners?

SPEAKER_01 11:03

Yeah. Uh eight dominoes is the first phase of my marketing career manifest. Uh, like I said, I came into it knowing nothing and learning everything on the fly on the job. And at first, I was learning all the technical things, you know, how to do SEO, how to build a website, how to run ads, how to build a brand. And I I I watched over years, and I I have this document, I still have it. It's about a 46-page Word doc of techniques, little little tricks, little matrices that I can use to plug into clients that I built over the years and collected. And what I realized was that for for some clients, they needed to just do marketing. They they weren't doing enough marketing to make it work, but for others, they were doing everything right and they still weren't getting results. And what came to pass was that I realized it wasn't about the doing of the marketing, it was the fact that they had never figured out how to talk about their product in a way that benefited the consumer. And so I went through my giant log of all of my tips and and little trick things that I had developed, and I realized that the customers that got stuck, I used certain ones at certain points that were doing the right stuff, that were getting the leads, but they weren't getting the conversions. And I I actually built a PDF handout of those, and that was great for a while, but as I use that PDF more and more, I realized that there is a refinement and there is an order, an order that you can deploy these messages, these emotional, impactful messages to consumers in a sequence that if you do it in the right way, they compound the message of your product and your service and your company until they continue to knock down a bigger and a bigger and a bigger domino until finally they can make a decision to engage with you, not because they want your product, but because they want the better version of the future that you've set them up for. And so that's what eight dominoes is it walks you through the eight steps in sequence that if you can line up your consumers to go through it, emotionally they will be so impacted by your product that not buying is a firm testament to their commitment to a poorer life.

SPEAKER_00 14:06

Amazing. Is that applicable to all uh uh size of businesses, or is that more for small and mid-sized businesses? Where do you see that fit?

SPEAKER_01 14:17

Every business can benefit from this because, and this is the cool thing that I love about this, and this came out accidentally, as I was setting this up, but then I realized you can actually extract any one of the eight dominoes and use it on its own. So even if you have a successful program or a program that's doing okay, you can still find value in reevaluating the emotional impact of certain points in your messaging journey. And if nothing else, at least makes you begin to think about why do we start businesses in the first place? To solve people's problems so they live better lives. And that's that's it. That's the whole that's the whole thesis here. Solve people's problems to create better lives and communicate that possibility.

SPEAKER_00 15:10

That is just uh amazing. Um so should anyone before let's say that we are in midlife and we're considering a new business, should your book be the one to read before we decide which product or which service we will develop?

SPEAKER_01 15:30

Um, I I would say no. And the reason for that is because I believe that the best business for everybody, whether that's as an employee or you're going to go and start a business, the business that matters to you, the industry that matters to you, that's what you should be in. That's what you should be working towards because you're going to have passion. Like I said earlier in the podcast, if you're not following passion, you are trading life for success, and that is what leads to the burnout. And so we cannot chase things without passion. Money isn't worth it. Okay. Money is not worth the burnout. And what I've found is that every time I get burned out and I stop doing the things that are burning me out, and I do the things that I want to do, whether that's as big as I'm gonna quit and start a whole company, or as small as, you know what, I want ice cream today. When I do those things, that's when I make the most forward progress, when I make the most money, and when I have the best time. And so I would encourage you to find your passion first and then jump into some business books. I do list out in my book a bunch of other business books and entrepreneurship books and mindset books and marketing books that I think directly influenced my book, let alone are amazing on their own.

SPEAKER_00 17:20

Amazing. So, Jake, where can where can our listeners and viewers uh order your book and where can they get in touch with you?

SPEAKER_01 17:30

Excellent. Well, eight dominoes is available on Amazon and Kindle and Paperback, Hardback and Audiobook are coming soon. Um, and if you want to get in touch with me, you can visit me at jake thewizard.com and you can find out about everything I'm doing from uh books to mastermind to side projects. Uh that because I try to stay in my passion zone. So uh I actually have a uh an app game coming out very soon, too.

SPEAKER_00 18:03

So thank thank you, Jake. Thank you for all these insights. I will include all the links in the description uh below. And thank you for being my guest tonight.

SPEAKER_01 18:15

Oh, pleasure. Thanks for having me.